


Just Like Jimmy Stewart

by ladyknightley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 22:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5350433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightley/pseuds/ladyknightley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James and Lily discuss Christmas films. And wossles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like Jimmy Stewart

**Author's Note:**

> Semi-spoiler warning that this probably won’t make much sense if you haven’t seen It’s A Wonderful Life. But if you haven’t seen It’s A Wonderful Life, go and watch it now rather than reading this. It’d be a much better use of your time. And, as ever, I don't own anything.

“Oi, Evans! I’ve got a question for you—an important one. Are you ready?”

He sat down in the armchair opposite, and Lily looked up, startled by the seriousness of his tone and the intensity of his gaze. “Fire away,” she replied, a little uncertainly.

“What,” James said, leaning forwards, “is a wossle?”

“A...a what?” Lily asked.

“You know,” he replied, as though it were obvious. “A wossle!”

“A _what_?” she repeated, frowning.

“A wossle! A wossle, a wossle, a _wossle_!” 

“Oh, a _wossle_!” Lily cried. “Thank you, now that you’ve repeated yourself twelve times, I know exactly what a wossle is. It’s...a wossle.”

James, whose face had lit up when she first spoke, frowned. “This is no time for jokes,” he replied. “I need to know. What is a wossle?”

“I’m sorry,” Lily said, trying to sound polite even though she could feel herself rapidly losing patience. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you being serious, or is this just you being an idiot?”

“I’m being _very_ serious! I told you, it’s no joke. This is very important,” he said indignantly. “Look, let me write it down—can I have your quill?”

She handed it over. “No, don’t write on that it’s my Charms essay,” she said. “Look, there you go.” He scribbled something down on the parchment she’d passed him, then handed it back with a flourish. Lily squinted at his writing—it really was phenomenally bad—then comprehension dawned. “Oh!” she said. “A wassail!”

“That’s what I said,” James replied. “A wossle.”

“ _Wassail_ ,” said Lily.

“ _Wossle_ ,” said James.

“Wassail.”

“Yes—that. What is it?”

“What’s a wassail?” He nodded. “Well,” said Lily. “It’s...er...it’s...a verb? You go wassailing?”

“Yes yes, but what do you _do_? How does one wassail?” he asked impatiently.

“I’m not really sure,” Lily said. “I think it has something to do with alcohol? Maybe?”

“Huh.”

“Why do you ask, anyway?”

“I came across it in a book,” he replied. “It said it was a muggle Christmas tradition, but I’d never heard of it. So I thought I’d ask you, to see if anyone in your family had ever... _wassailed_.” He wiggled an eyebrow at her suggestively, and she stifled a giggle.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not as perverted as it sounds,” she said, “and of course, my totally normal and completely sane family would _never_ do anything odd...but all of our Christmas traditions, at least, are pretty standard.”

“Like?”

“Oh, you know,” Lily said, waving a hand. “The usual. We put the tree up—we always do it the night I get home from school, which is fun—and Mum and Petunia always make mincemeat together. Which I don’t mind, because I hate mincemeat, and mince pies—”

“Disgusting, aren’t they?” James agreed. “Everyone loves them, and I’ve no idea why, they’re _awful_.”

“It’s all the raisins in them,” Lily said, miming gagging.

“Never trust a raisin,” he nodded.

“I agree!” she said firmly. “But, yes, that’s about it for Christmas traditions, really. Unless you count slobbing out in front of the TV for two weeks.”

“To watch films and that?” James said, clearly proud to be able to contribute such a fact to the conversation.

“Mmhmm,” Lily agreed. “Gran always makes us watch the Queen’s speech— _riveting_ that is—but I do like the Christmas specials. And Christmas films. Mum always likes to watch _It’s A Wonderful Life_ on Christmas Eve.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a film,” she said. “It’s meant to be _the_ Christmas movie, you know? The one everyone agrees is the best film ever made. And it _is_ pretty good. It always makes me cry,” she admitted.

James raised an eyebrow. “It’s good because it makes you cry?” he said. “What are you, some kind of masochist now?”

“Nooo,” Lily said crossly. “It’s a good kind of crying. The kind that makes you feel sort of...pure and happy inside, like the tears are washing away all the bad in the world, and leaving you—”

“You do cry a _lot_ ,” he pointed out.

She couldn’t deny this. “I’m just a very sensitive person. But you would have to have a heart of absolute stone not to cry at _It’s A Wonderful Life_ , you really would.”

“What’s it about, then?” he asked, and she paused. Trying to explain a story, without giving too much away and spoiling it, or rambling and losing the attention of the person you were talking to, but at the same time trying to make whatever it was sound interesting was a challenge at the best of times, but if there was ever a plot that deserved justice doing to it, it was the plot of this film. So she thought carefully for a moment.

“It’s about,” she said eventually, “this man who owns a bank, but it goes a bit wrong and starts to fail, and then he tries to kill himself, because he thinks it’ll make it better—”

“Ah, the financial system and suicide,” James said knowingly. “Truly, nothing puts me in the festive spirit quite like that combination.”

“No! Shush!” she said. “It starts with this man, Jimmy Stewart, as he grows up in a small town in America, and his family own the Building and Loan, right, and then it all goes a bit pear-shaped because Uncle Billy makes this terrible mistake, or he thinks he does, anyway George—that’s Jimmy Stewart—thinks he needs to kill himself to make things better financially, then his guardian angel, Clarence Oddbody, comes down and shows him what the town would be like if he wasn’t there, and George agrees that it’s all terrible and so he lives. The end,” she finished, slightly anti-climatically.

“I think I got about one word in every three there,” he said, “and, no offence, but you haven’t exactly sold me on it. I mean, if suicide and banks are what muggles think are Christmassy...I don’t know.” He shook his head.

“You clearly have no soul!” cried Lily.

“What, because I don’t think suicide is amusing, light-hearted and generally festive? I would argue that that perhaps suggests I have more soul than you,” replied James.

“It’s _not about suicide_!” Lily said, causing several rather alarmed-looking third years to glance over at them. “And besides, he lives. That’s the point!”

“I still don’t think—”

“ _And_ ,” she added, sounding triumphant. “There’s a really, really, _really_ mean person in it. The baddie. And he’s a _really bad_ baddie.”

“What does he do, kill Santa?”

“No, no, worse than that, he manipulates the financial system at the bank by stealing Uncle Billy’s money and causing George to want to kill himself to protect his family, and then he—the bad guy, I mean—takes over the town and it’s terrible and like the worst form of capitalism _but_ ,” she said pausing for breath. “The bad guy has a name.”

“I’d imagine that he would,” said James mildly.

“And it’s _Potter_!” she said triumphantly. “The baddest bad guy in the whole world is called _Mr Potter_!”

“You’re making this up!” he said.

“I am not!” she said, sounding more delighted at this than anything else. “It’s _all true_.”

“Fine. Fine!” said James. “Who is this terrible Potter, besmirching the name of all Potters everywhere, and how do I stop him?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “It’s a film, duh.”

“The ‘best film ever’?” James said, making air quotes. She nodded.

“You have to watch it, then you’d agree.”

“Right. So this film, that’s about banking and suicide, and features the baddest baddie ever to bad, who happens to be called _Potter_...you want me to watch it, because you think I’ll love it. _Really_?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, and he couldn’t help notice her flushed cheeks, the shine in her eyes as he argued with her. He was trying to be better this year, he really was—and it had only been a few months since everything that had happened in the middle of OWLs, so maybe he shouldn’t push it—but it was so much fun to wind her up. And she never, ever backed down from an argument with him, which must mean that she liked it, too...

“Fine,” he started to say, “maybe I’ll like it, but—”

“Like what?” said Mary, appearing from the dorms and sliding herself into the armchair Lily was occupying, waving hello.

“We’re talking about _It’s A Wonderful Life_ ,” said Lily.

He wanted to point out that they had started off their conversation about wassailing, but before he could, the bell for the end of lunch rang, and Mary and Lily turned to each other with matching expressions of what he could only describe as pure ecstasy on their faces, and said, in rather creepy unison, “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings!”

“ _Or_ , when the bell rings, we need to go to Herbology,” said James, but they ignored him, shrieking with laughter and falling all over each other.

“Merry Christmas you old building and loan!” cried Mary, and Lily cheered. He hoped this wouldn’t be like the time he got the two of them talking about _Blue Peter_.

Slowly, he chivvied them both into packing up their things and leaving the common room, but the entire way down to the Greenhouses, they kept quoting bits of the film to each other, or saying non-things like “Oh, and the bit with the _swimming pool_ —” “I _knooow_!” which, really, was very annoying for someone who had basically no understanding of the topic at all.

Or so he tried to pretend.

“Oh, Evans, why didn’t you say there was a _swimming pool_ in the film?” he gasped. “If you’d mentioned _that_ before, I’d never have—”

“Shut up,” she said, pushing him towards a snowdrift. He retaliated by charming a snowball to fly at her and she ducked, before turning around, hands on hips, to glare at him. “You know what?”

“What?” he grinned back, and he felt a flicker of triumph as he noticed she was trying _so_ hard not to let her own lips twitch.

“One day, I’m going to take you to the cinema or you can come to my Mum’s or whatever, and we’re going to watch the film. _Then_ you’ll see that I’m right!” She nodded once in triumph.

“You mean you’ll deign to see me outside of school hours?” he asked.

“Only to prove how wrong you are,” she said. “You’ll agree that I have the best taste in movies ever, _and_ that this particular film is the best one ever made.”

“I’ve never seen any films,” he replied. “How would I know this one was the best one ever made?”

“Well...I’ll show you some others,” she said. “You’ll have to come round lots, I suppose,” and she blushed ever so slightly. “We’ll start with the Christmas classics and go from there. But I’ll be right: this one will be your favourite.”

“Even with a bad Potter?”

“Yes!”

“Come on, you two!” Both of them looked up, startled, and realised Mary had left them and was now at the door to the Greenhouse, with the rest of their class.

“Mary’s muggleborn,” James said, as they began to trudge through the snow again.

“Yes,” Lily said slowly.

“So, d’you think she’d know what wassailing involves?”

“Oh, no,” dismissed Lily. “You asked _me_ that,” she added. “You can’t go asking Mary or anyone else who’s muggleborn, either. _I’m_ going to be the one who finds it out.”

“You’re so competitive,” he laughed, and just caught the words “I love it,” before they could tumble out too.

“Yeah,” said Lily, “but that’s why you like me.” And she picked up a handful of snow, dumped it down the back of his cloak and ran off, laughing in glee, to the lesson.

And really, there was very little he could say to that.


End file.
